11/18/04: Tribal Update: Witchdoctors at Work!

Hello Folks:

A big thank you to the many of you who have sent gifts to help us send food and medical supplies to the Tribal believers. We sent two planes with food in today....and the food was actually donated by some of Venezuelan churches. We praise the Lord for their help too! And yes, more flights are planned. The nurse and doctor are planning on going in a gain real soon too to vaccinate and take in more supplies. Yes, thanks so much for your encouragement and prayers and gifts.

Folks, there is something else to pray about here. During this whole, sad episode with all the deaths of the children, the five local witchdoctors have had a massive "visitation" program. They have visited a lot the believers who had children who were really sick and tried to convince them to let them do their power singing on them and suck out the sickness. They even went to Hernan's wife when he was gone and tried to convince her. (Hernan is one of the main church pastors) But she didn't go for it....but some of the other weaker believers did. In their desperation to see their children helped, they reached out to the old ways. Yes, the battle is raging. The kingdom of darkness is working hard against the kingdom of light. And right, let's continue to pray that the believers would stand strong on the scriptures and that they, like Abraham, would continue to believe God, no matter what the odds. But let's also be praying for these five witchdoctors. They are Mendo, Vicente, Americo, Jose Bolivar, and Joche Mene. All of these guys except Vicente professed faith in Christ many years ago. Some of them were even aggressive evangelists! So let's really join in prayer regarding these men who are working so hard to spread darkness and deception everywhere.

Thanks once again so much for standing together with us to encourage the Tribal churches.

Leaning hard on HIM,
Merrill and Teresa